Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2021 -

In Fyodor Dostoevsky--in the Beginning, 1821-1845 (CH, Sep'17, 55-0098), the first volume of what will be a three-volume set, Marullo (Univ. of Notre Dame) offered insights about Dostoevsky's early life and made the case that criticism about Dostoevsky suffers for having undervalued his early experiences. But whereas that volume offered little not available elsewhere, this second volume creates a diary-informed picture of a troubled artist who hit hard times after the success of his first novel, Poor Folk, and during the failure of his four subsequent offerings. Marulla's exhaustive research into every aspect of Dostoevsky's life over this period results in a vivid account of the writer's recurring patterns: "not only did the events and experiences [of Dostoevsky's life] in the first two years after Poor Folk remain etched, acid-like, in his consciousness ... they portended troubles and tribulations that would beset him and his characters in the next three decades" (p. xiii). Among Marullo's conclusions is the tragic reality that Dostoevsky failed to learn the lessons of success and failure, repeatedly playing out the same psychological dramas and making bad situations worse, for both himself and his characters. Readers can look forward to how volume three projects these patterns across the period of Dostoevsky's greatest works, which were yet to come.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

This third volume of The Complete Folktales of A. N. Afanas'ev completes Haney's translation of Afanas'ev's Narodnye russkie skazki (NRS, first published in Russian in 1855-63). Haney, who taught at the Univ. of Washington, died before this volume was completed, and Sibelan Forrester (Swarthmore College) stepped in to complete the volume. It includes tales 319-579 and "Commentaries." NRS is the basis for V. A. Propp's The Morphology of the Folktale (first Eng. tr., 1958), which influenced, among others, Claude Levi-Strauss, Alan Dundes, and Roman Jakobson. The translation is based on the 1986 Moscow edition by L. G. Barag and N. V. Novikov, to which Forrester added 45 tales omitted by Soviet and Tsarist censors. As in the first two volumes (CH, May'15, 52-4642; CH, May'16, 53-3868), the language of the translation is a pleasantly simple colloquial English that still evokes the atmosphere of the Russian tale. All tales come with their number in the Aarne-Thompson classification. Variant tales not differing significantly from the basic tale were omitted but are still available in the Russian editions. Including commentaries and glossaries explaining Russian words, this set will be indispensable for those interested in folklore and Slavic studies.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.